Georgia Tech and Emory undergraduates will soon have access to one of the best-equipped neurophysiology labs dedicated for biomedical engineering student use.

The Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University now offers teaching laboratories with five state-of-the-art microelectrode arrays, which allow for experimentation in cellular communications.

The cutting-edge technology is produced by Axion BioSystems, a company co-founded in 2008 by Georgia Tech alumnus Tom O’Brien using technology licensed from the Institution.

With this new system, Georgia Tech and Emory undergraduates can tackle the challenges of neuroscience in a tangible way, from unlocking the mysteries of learning and memory, to developing methods for restoring vision.

The technology will also allow students to explore and interact with tissue of the heart, spinal cord, bone and pancreas.

By training undergraduates to work with these tissues, the goal is to better prepare students for careers developing the next generation medical devices and cell therapies.

This spring, undergraduates will begin using the new technology in courses such as Neuroengineering Fundamentals and Quantitative Engineering Physiology Lab.

The Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University is a joint department, equally part of the Emory School of Medicine and the Georgia Tech College of Engineering.